All posts tagged: Featured

Impress Your Boss: 3 Things to Do When Starting a New Role

Published by

Whether you are moving to a new role within the same company, or taking on a new job somewhere else, try the three things outlined below.  Following this advice, you will surely make a positive first impression on your new boss and will achieve a more organized and efficient transition. No. 1 WHEN: Two Weeks before Your Start Date WHAT: Send your new boss an email (you should have already obtained his or her email address during your interview, for sending a thank-you note after the interview), tell him or her that: 1) You are very excited about starting in two weeks; 2) You would like to get a head-start if possible – ask him or her if there’s any material he or she could send along in the meantime for you to read or work on, or anyone he or she would recommend you to meet and talk to. Say that you want to get yourself familiarized with the projects that you will be working on to make the transition as efficient as possible. …

5 Things You Should Know Before Traveling to China

Published by

1. No Need to Leave a Tip Unlike most Western cultures, in China you are not expectedto tip. The waiters and waitresses get paid a monthly salary, and in most casescomplimentary accommodation (boarding and meals), and therefore do not expectto get compensated through tips. Therefore, on a restaurant bill, you are notgoing to find the tip fields you may expect. Several years ago, when traveling in China, my husband (whois an American and doesn’t feel comfortable not tipping) left 20 Yuan (roughly3 dollars) on the table as a tip after paying with cash. As we were leaving,the waitress hurriedly caught up to us, holding the change in her hands, “Sir,you forgot your change!” When my husband told her that it was a tip, theexpression on the waitress’s face was more bewildered than anything else. Similarly, when a bellboy helps you with luggage at a hotel,or when a pool boy brings you new towels, there’s still no expectation for atip. In my view, an underlying reason for this “no-tipping”culture is an abundance in labor which leads …

Til the End of the World (Fiction)

Published by

Please, God, let him telephone me now. Wen prayed in her mind. She shut off the shower. The sound of water reduced to a drip and stopped. She pulled the shower curtain to the side, stepped out of the tub, and walked over to the sink. She picked up her phone from beside the faucet, beads of water rolling down her back. Frowning without knowing, she lit up the screen. No messages. No missed calls. Maybe next time God would hear my prayer, she assured herself. She slowly set the phone down and started to dry herself off with an old towel. Outside the window, the city sky was a heavy, pale gray. A thunderstorm was forming. She retrieved her gaze. She’d better hurry up, if she didn’t want to get caught in the rain. She slung the damp towel on the rod, opened the cabinet, and took out her contact lenses. Her eyes met briefly with the empty pink bottle in the corner of the cabinet. That was the lotion she bought when she …

Find The Leader in You

Published by

In the summer of 2014, I arrived in the US from China for an MBA education with a top 20 university in the US. One of the core courses in the first semester was titled “Leadership”. At the beginning of the semester, the professor conducted a class-wide survey, which was composed of a “self-assessment” and a “peer-assessment”, in which the students rated each classmate on how they perceived that classmate: Do you consider he/she a leader? Do you think he/she is a valuable contributor in the classroom? Do you think he/she is difficult? And so on. The same survey was then re-run a few more times throughout the semester, as the students got to know each other more through various activities (and, of course, as the learning from the Leadership class progressed). I never cared for the class, as I believe “leadership” is a mindset you grow in yourself through real life events and mature self-reflection, rather than something dryly taught in a classroom by watching mediocre documentaries and participating in half-hearted discussions. I didn’t …